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If you buy things over the Internet and then voluntarily remit the sales tax to your state, then either you're a model citizen with above-average recall, or a model citizen with the diligence of an archivist. So pat yourself on the back, and then boot yourself in the behind. Nationally, online customers "forget" on April 15 of each year to pay about $23 billion in sales tax.

In the Senate, Maryland Democrat Ben Cardin says that in his state alone the annual gap between what is owed by online shoppers and what Maryland actually receives from them is an estimated $375 million. Missouri Republican Roy Blunt says that 300 people in his state last year volunteered to pay the tax, though "I suspect many more than that shopped online."

Republicans and Democrats in both the House and the Senate who represent states that collect sales taxes have been trying since 1999 to pass legislation that would require online retailers, even those physically located out of state, to collect the levy the same way in-state, brick-and-mortar merchants do—at the time of sale. The difference, of course, is that the Internet retailers would have to compute the tax for 45 states containing more than 10,000 local taxing jurisdictions.

This year in the Senate, Democrat Dick Durbin of Illinois and Republicans Mike Enzi of Wyoming and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee introduced the Marketplace Fairness Act of 2013, the latest iteration of the legislation. To make tax collection less onerous, the bill would require the states to simplify their codes and provide free tax-computing software to the Internet retailers. This would give Main Street merchants a fighting chance, the supporters claim. They tell tales of shoppers who try on clothing at the local dress shop and then purchase the items on the Internet to save on taxes.

In the Senate last Friday night, supporters successfully attached the bill as an amendment to a budget plan introduced by Finance Committee Chairman Patty Murray of Washington by a vote of 75-24. The amendment was a publicity stunt of sorts because Murray's partisan budget will never make it through the Republican-dominated House. The GOP calls the Murray budget a giant tax-and-spend plan that would end up eliminating popular middle-class deductions. But the stunt exceeded the wildest expectations of its supporters. The legislation is more alive this year than ever because of the Senate vote

ALTHOUGH THE BIPARTISAN group supporting the Internet tax-collection bill has been growing each year, it just now reached critical mass in the Senate, where it has 27 sponsors from both parties. There are 48 co-sponsors of the legislation in the House, where the bill hasn't yet come up for a vote. Prospects for the measure are positive. Passage would take away a major advantage of the e-sellers.

Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire said that cash-strapped states were trying through the legislation to enlist as tax collectors merchants who are citizens of states like hers, where there are no sales taxes. Her argument fell flat.

Montana's Democratic Sen. Max Baucus said it had major flaws, and that one state shouldn't have a right to compel the citizen of another state to collect its taxes: "This would be revolutionary."